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Sunday, February 24, 2013

ALERT! ALERT! Kellogg Special K with berries...

A title like this can be quite the eye catcher. One may be thinking: WHAT ABOUT SPECIAL K BERRIES? As a regular consumer and Special K with berries fanatic, this headline made me stop what I was doing and read. In fact, the alert was referring to the recall of this quite popular Kellogg Product:

After confirming that I was not a victim of this recall, I sighed in relief and ate a bowl of cereal. The funny thing is, I probably would not have eaten a bowl of cereal that morning if I had not heard about this recall. Kind of a weird reaction to a recall, but I can imagine I am not the only one with this reaction. Did other people react to this as a subliminal message as I did?

Recall announcements can be interpreted in many ways. I feel it is more typical to have a negative reaction to a recall, seeing a product as unsafe, and further associating a producer as untrustworthy. As a critical ad observer, I often dislike ad's and tend to discount the persuasive nature of ad's. Though, something about the recall announcement blocked those critical thoughts because I originally saw it as truly informational and sincere.

As I read deeper into the announcement I began to see some of the marketing, and customer loyalty tactics that were in many ways able to combat the negative reactions that could come with a recall.
For instance, in the Consumer Alert Kellogg's choice of words such as "voluntary recall" could give the impression that they are truly putting the consumers safety first. Another method they used was the pledge to give a replacement coupon for those customers who may have received a product described in the recall. Repeat customer coupons are tactic #1 to gaining customer loyalty in any business class I have ever taken. And finally, there are "no reports of associated injuries", unlike other recalls that have had very negative effects.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention how viral this recall was! It was reported on many of the major news stations across the nation such as CBS, ABC, and FOX, on the Huffington Post, and it was the top news item on Yahoo!.

I now see where the common phrase "all publicity is good publicity" comes from.
Do you agree with this phrase? What was your initial reaction?